HUMAN CAPITAL

Strategies to Help 

Agencies Meet Their 

Missions in an Era of 

Highly Constrained 

Resources

Report to Congressional Requesters 

May 2014

GAO-14-168

United States Government Accountability Office
United States Government Accountability Office

Highlights of GAO-14-168, a report to

congressional requesters

May 2014

HUMAN CAPITAL

Strategies to Help Agencies Meet Their Missions in an 

Era of Highly Constrained Resources

Why GAO Did This Study

Given the budgetary and long-term 

fiscal challenges facing the nation, 

agencies must identify options to meet 

their missions with fewer resources. 

However, if agencies do not pay 

careful attention to strategic workforce 

planning and other approaches to 

personnel management, then reduced

investments in human capital can have 

lasting, detrimental effects on their

capacity to meet their mission. GAO 

was asked to review the actions taken 

by selected agencies to manage their 

workforces and plan for future needs in 

an era of flat or declining budgets.

This report assesses (1) key strategic 

human capital challenges federal 

agencies face in an era of highly

constrained resources and identifies 

strategies for addressing them, and (2) 

the extent to which OPM ensures 

agencies have the assistance that 

CHCOs considered most important to 

mitigate human capital challenges.

What GAO Recommends

GAO recommends that OPM work with 

the CHCO Council to: (1) strengthen 

coordination and leadership on 

government-wide human capital 

issues, (2) explore expanded use of 

enterprise solutions to more efficiently 

and effectively address shared 

challenges, (3) review the extent to 

which new capabilities are needed to 

promote agile talent management, and 

(4) evaluate the communication 

strategy for and effectiveness of tools, 

guidance, or leading practices OPM 

provides for addressing human capital 

challenges. OPM and the CHCO 

Council concurred with GAO’s 

recommendations.

What GAO Found

GAO convened a forum of chief human capital officers (CHCO) who described a 

number of difficulties their agencies face in maintaining the capacity to meet their 

missions during lean fiscal times. GAO’s analysis identified three broad recurring 

human capital challenges and strategies to address them. While these 

challenges were not new nor exclusively a result of constrained budgets, reduced

resources exacerbated the challenges and also created a willingness among 

agencies to consider nontraditional strategies for addressing them, namely: 

1. Strengthening coordination to address a fragmented human capital 

community. Our analysis found that the federal human capital community is 

highly fragmented with multiple actors inside government informing and 

executing personnel policies and initiatives in ways that are not always aligned 

with broader, government-wide human capital efforts. The CHCO Council was 

established to improve coordination across federal agencies on personnel 

issues, but according to the CHCOs, the council is not carrying out this 

responsibility as well as it could. This challenge manifests itself in two ways: 

across organizations, with many actors making human capital decisions in an 

uncoordinated manner, and within agencies, excluding CHCOs and the human 

capital staff from key agency decisions.

2. Using enterprise solutions to address shared challenges. Our analysis 

found that agencies have many common human capital challenges, but they tend

to address these issues independently without looking to enterprise solutions that 

could resolve them more effectively. Across government, there are examples of 

agencies and the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) initiating enterprise 

solutions to address crosscutting issues, including the consolidation of federal 

payroll systems into shared-services centers. The CHCOs highlighted human 

resource information technology and strategic workforce planning as two areas 

that are ripe for government-wide collaboration.

3. Creating more agile talent management to address inflexibilities in the 

current system. Our analysis found talent management tools lack two key 

ingredients for developing an agile workforce, namely the ability to (1) identify the 

skills available in their existing workforces, and (2) move people with specific 

skills to address emerging, temporary, or permanent needs within and across 

agencies.

The CHCOs said OPM needs to do more to raise awareness and assess the 

utility of the tools and guidance it provides to agencies to address key human 

capital challenges. The CHCOs said they were either unfamiliar with OPM’s tools 

and guidance or they fell short of their agency’s needs. OPM officials said they 

had not evaluated the tools and guidance they provide to the agencies. As a 

result, a key resource for helping agencies improve the capacity of their 

personnel offices is likely being underutilized.

View GAO-14-168. For more information, 

contact Robert Goldenkoff at (202) 512-2757 

or goldenkoffr@gao.gov.
Page i GAO-14-168 Human Capital

Letter 1

Background 3

Strengthened Coordination, Enterprise Solutions, and Agile Talent 

Management Could Help Agencies Maintain Capacity in an Era 

of Flat or Declining Budgets 5

The Human Capital Community Lacks Collaboration Needed to 

Address Fragmentation across Organizations 6

Human Capital Decisions Are Uncoordinated within Agencies 10

OPM Needs to Ensure Its Human Capital Tools and Guidance Are 

Meeting Agencies’ Needs 21

Conclusions 22

Recommendations for Executive Action 23

Agency Comments and Our Evaluation 24

Appendix I Objectives, Scope, and Methodology 26

Appendix II Interactive Graphic Information 28

Appendix III Comments from the Office of Personnel Management 30

Appendix IV GAO Contact and Staff Acknowledgments 36

Related GAO Products 37

Figures

Figure 1: The Federal Human Capital Community is Fragmented 

(Interactive graphic) 7

Figure 2: The Federal Human Capital Community Is Fragmented 

(Print Version) 28

Contents
Page ii GAO-14-168 Human Capital

Abbreviations 

CAO chief acquisition officer

CFO chief financial officer

CHCO chief human capital officer

CHCO Act Chief Human Capital Officers Act of 2002

CIO chief information officer

CIOC Chief Information Officers Council

CLO chief learning officer

DOT U.S. Department of Transportation

FDA Food and Drug Administration

GPRAMA GPRA Modernization Act

HCAAF Human Capital Assessment and

Accountability Framework

HR IT Human Resources Information Technology

HR University Human Resources University

NASA National Aeronautics and Space Administration

NGO nongovernmental organizations

NRC Nuclear Regulatory Commission

OMB Office of Management and Budget

OPM Office of Personnel Management

PIC Performance Improvement Council

PMC President’s Management Council

State Department of State

Treasury Department of Treasury

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Page 1 GAO-14-168 Human Capital

441 G St. N.W.

Washington, DC 20548

May 7, 2014

The Honorable Elijah E. Cummings

Ranking Member

Committee on Oversight and Government Reform

House of Representatives

The Honorable Stephen F. Lynch

Ranking Member

Subcommittee on Federal Workforce, U.S. Postal Service and the 

Census

Committee on Oversight and Government Reform

House of Representatives

The federal budget is a driving consideration in every agency action that 

affects the management of its workforce, including decisions to hire, 

retain, train, contract, oversee, acquire technology, and collaborate. The 

Budget Control Act of 2011 established a 10-year cap on discretionary 

spending through 2021, but many agencies had experienced flat or 

declining budgets for several years prior.1

Given the likelihood that flat or declining budgets will continue to 

necessitate workforce adjustments across government, you asked us to 

review the extent and nature of actions being taken by selected agencies 

to manage their workforces and plan for future workforce needs. Our 

objectives were to (1) assess the key strategic human capital challenges 

federal agencies face in an era of highly constrained resources and 

identify strategies for addressing those challenges, and (2) assess the 

extent to which the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) ensures 

In the face of limited budgets, 

some agencies are reducing hiring, limiting training, offering employee 

buyouts and providing early retirement packages. Without careful 

attention to strategic and workforce planning and other approaches to 

managing and engaging personnel, the reduced investments in human 

capital can have lasting, detrimental effects on the capacity of an 

agency’s workforce to meet its mission.

 1

Pub. L. No. 112-25, 125 Stat. 240. In December 2013, the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2013 

extended the sequestration of direct spending to fiscal years 2022 and 2023 and revised 

discretionary spending limits established under the Budget Control Act of 2011. Pub. L. 

No. 113-67, div. A, title I, subtitle A, § 101, 127 Stat. 1165, 1166-1169.
Page 2 GAO-14-168 Human Capital

agencies have the tools, such as workforce planning models, guidance, 

and assistance, that chief human capital officers (CHCO) considered 

most important to mitigate human capital challenges associated with 

highly constrained resources.

To answer the first objective, we convened a forum of CHCOs, deputy 

CHCOs, or their representatives from 25 of the 27 agency members of 

the CHCO Council and analyzed the CHCOs’ comments to identify the 

key government-wide human capital challenges.2 We also reviewed 

literature and interviewed officials from nongovernmental organizations 

that study and report on federal human capital management issues. We 

examined case illustrations of leading human capital management 

practices at four federal agencies: National Aeronautics and Space 

Administration (NASA), the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), the 

Department of State (State), and the Department of Transportation 

(DOT). We selected these agencies based on indications of their potential 

for overall effective human capital leadership, such as high Federal 

Employee Viewpoint Survey Scores and attrition rates.3

We conducted this performance audit from January 2013 through May 

2014 in accordance with generally accepted government auditing 

standards. Those standards require that we plan and perform the audit to 

obtain sufficient, appropriate evidence to provide a reasonable basis for 

For additional 

perspectives on strategies addressing federal human capital challenges, 

we reviewed our recent work on leading practices for strategic planning 

and our other relevant work on federal management. To answer the 

second objective, we asked the CHCOs to describe the tools and 

guidance OPM provides to address key human capital challenges 

identified during the CHCO forum session, their level of satisfaction with 

them, and ways those tools and guidance could be strengthened. We 

reviewed documentation of guidance and tools that OPM provides to 

agencies to assist them with managing the key human capital challenges 

articulated by the CHCO forum and interviewed officials from OPM. See 

appendix I for a more detailed discussion of our scope and methodology.

 2

Of the 27 CHCOs invited, the Small Agency Council and the Department of Labor did not 

send a CHCO, deputy CHCO or representative to the forum.

3

The Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey is a tool offered by OPM that measures 

employees’ perceptions of whether, and to what extent, conditions characterizing 

successful organizations are present in their agencies.
Page 3 GAO-14-168 Human Capital

our findings and conclusions based on our audit objectives. We believe 

that the evidence obtained provides a reasonable basis for our findings 

and conclusions based on our audit objectives.

Strategic human capital management continues to be a pervasive 

challenge facing the federal government. We first identified it as a highrisk area in 2001 because of the significant challenges agencies faced in:

• leadership continuity and succession planning;

• acquiring and developing staffs whose size, skills, and deployment 

met agency needs; and

• creating results-oriented organizational cultures.4

Although the area remained a high-risk issue in 2013, the federal 

government has made progress addressing these human capital 

challenges. For example, in 2010, OPM undertook a major initiative to 

streamline and reform the federal hiring process. Through this and other 

initiatives, OPM, along with the CHCO Council, Congress, and federal 

agencies have strengthened the federal human capital infrastructure. As 

a result of these improvements, in 2011, we narrowed the focus of our 

human capital high-risk assessment to the challenges remaining in 

closing current and emerging critical skills gaps. In our 2013 high-risk 

report, we identified skills gaps in several mission-critical occupations, 

such as human resources specialists, cybersecurity, contract specialists, 

and those in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics 

occupational groups.5

Congress has given OPM a key role in helping agencies strategically 

manage their human capital. Under the Chief Human Capital Officers Act 

of 2002 (CHCO Act), OPM was tasked with designing a set of systems for 

assessing the management of human capital by agencies, which is to 

include standards for, among other things, aligning an agency’s human 

capital strategies with its missions, goals, and organizational objectives.6

 4

GAO, High-Risk Series: An Update, GAO-01-263 (Washington, D.C.: January 2001).

5

GAO, High-Risk Series: An Update, GAO-13-283 (Washington, D.C.: February 2013).

6

Title XIII of the Homeland Security Act of 2002, Pub. L. No. 107-296, 116 Stat. 2135, 

2287-2300 (Nov. 25, 2002).

Background
Page 4 GAO-14-168 Human Capital

Each CHCO advises and assists his or her agency on all human capital 

and human resources management issues, including selecting, 

developing, training, and managing a high-quality, productive workforce in 

accordance with merit system principles.

The CHCO Act also established a CHCO Council, which is chaired by the 

Director of OPM, to advise and coordinate the activities of members’

agencies on such matters as the modernization of human resources 

systems, improved quality of human resources information, and 

legislation affecting human resources operations and organizations. 

There are 27 members of the CHCO Council, including CHCOs 

representing executive departments, those designated by the Director of 

OPM and some representing multiple agencies such as agencies within 

the intelligence community.

Workforce decisions aimed at reducing personnel costs today might have 

unforeseen implications for an agency’s ability to carry out its mission 

down the road. For example, in the aftermath of agency cuts in the 1990s, 

agencies reported that the voluntary separation incentives or “buyouts”

that were offered to employees were an effective means of reducing the 

workforce and lowering costs in the near term, but later caused 

operational problems such as the loss of institutional memory and 

expertise, increased workloads and backlogs, and skill imbalances over 

time.7

• job satisfaction dropped three points to 65 percent,

According to OPM, factors such as a 3-year pay freeze, automatic 

reductions from sequestration that included furloughs for hundreds of 

thousands of employees, and reductions in training and other areas have 

taken their toll on the federal workforce. In 2013 Employee Viewpoint 

Survey results, the “global satisfaction index” showed an 8-percentagepoint decline since 2010. Each of the four factors that make up the global 

satisfaction index showed downward trends from last year’s results:

• pay satisfaction was down five points to 54 percent,

• organization satisfaction fell three points to 65 percent, and

 7

GAO, Federal Downsizing: Better Workforce and Strategic Planning Could Have Made 

Buyouts More Effective, GAO/GGD-96-62 (Washington, D.C.: Aug. 26, 1996).
Page 5 GAO-14-168 Human Capital

• respondents that said they would recommend their organization 

declined by four points to 63 percent.8

Our analysis identified a number of difficulties that agencies face in 

maintaining the capacity to meet their missions during lean fiscal times. In 

our analysis of the CHCO comments from our forum, we identified three 

broad recurring human capital challenges: (1) lack of coordination in a 

fragmented human capital community, (2) a lack of an enterprise or 

“whole of government” approach to address crosscutting challenges, and 

(3) a lack of agile talent management. While recognizing that these 

challenges are not new or exclusively a result of flat or declining budgets, 

the CHCOs said lower budgets have exacerbated these issues. Because 

of the magnitude of these issues, the CHCOs said the fiscal environment 

also created the impetus to act and a willingness to consider creative and 

non-traditional strategies for addressing issues in ways that previously 

may not have been organizationally or culturally feasible. With this in 

mind, the CHCOs in our forum and our case illustration agencies 

identified a number of promising strategies and approaches to address 

each of the challenges. However, just as the challenges themselves do 

not manifest themselves the same way in every federal agency, the 

strategies to address them are not one-size-fits all, and as a result, it may 

be necessary for agencies to adapt them to their particular needs or 

circumstances.

A key challenge we identified from our analysis of the CHCO discussions 

was that the federal human capital community is highly fragmented, with 

multiple actors both inside and outside of government informing and 

executing personnel policies and initiatives in ways that are not always 

aligned with broader, government-wide human capital efforts. We found 

this challenge manifested itself in two ways: (1) across organizations, with 

many actors making human capital decisions in an uncoordinated 

manner, and (2) within agencies, with CHCOs and the human capital staff 

not involved in key agency decisions.

 8

Office of Personnel Management, Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey Results: 

Employees Influencing Change, 2013 Governmentwide Management Report. ii and 29 

(Washington, D.C.: Nov. 8, 2013).

Strengthened 

Coordination, 

Enterprise Solutions, 

and Agile Talent 

Management Could 

Help Agencies 

Maintain Capacity in 

an Era of Flat or 

Declining Budgets

Strengthened 

Collaboration within the 

Federal Human Capital 

Community Could Help 

Address Fragmentation 

Issues
Page 6 GAO-14-168 Human Capital

As shown in figure 1, within government, the Office of Management and 

Budget (OMB), OPM, the CHCO Council, and individual agencies create, 

implement, and oversee personnel initiatives. Those initiatives are 

shaped, in part, by input provided by labor unions and federal 

management councils such as the President’s Management Council 

(PMC). PMC—consisting of deputy administrators, chief operating 

officers, and other leaders from major federal agencies—advises the 

President and OMB on government reform initiatives, provides 

performance and management leadership throughout the executive 

branch, and oversees implementation of government-wide management 

policies and programs. The Director of OPM chairs the CHCO Council 

and is a PMC member. The CHCOs noted that each of these actors 

possess its own mission, initiatives, agendas, chain of command, 

budgets, and oversight. While this is to be expected given their various 

roles and responsibilities, these same factors can create disincentives to 

collaborating to achieve common human capital goals. Indeed, certain 

human capital issues, such as addressing mission critical skills gaps, are 

crosscutting in nature and require the coordinated efforts of multiple 

stakeholders.

The Human Capital 

Community Lacks 

Collaboration Needed 

to Address 

Fragmentation across 

Organizations
Figure 1: The Federal Human Capital Community Is Fragmented. Interactive graphic

Page 7 GAO-14-168 Human Capital

Print instructions To print text version of this graphic, go to appendix II.

Place cursor on the puzzle piece to see more information about that actor’s role in the human capital 

community. Remove cursor to close selection.

Directions:

Source: GAO analysis.
Page 8 GAO-14-168 Human Capital

The CHCO Council was established to improve coordination across 

federal agencies on personnel issues. Specifically, it was established to 

“advise and coordinate the activities of the agencies of its members on 

such matters as modernization of human resources systems, improved 

quality of human resources information, and legislation affecting human 

resources operations and organizations.”9

More broadly, the CHCOs noted that because of a lack of prioritization 

and coordination around key government-wide human capital initiatives, 

efforts to effectively inform key budget and legislative proposals that have 

implications for the federal workforce were being hampered. As one 

example, the CHCOs said there are known effects of reduced budgets on 

the federal workforce, including increased difficulty and deferments in 

recruiting, retaining, and developing employee skills. They explained, 

however, that they have not effectively used the CHCO Council to 

develop a coherent, actionable perspective or coordinated with OPM to 

deliver the perspective to Congress and OMB. To do so, the CHCOs 

offered four ideas for better informing and supporting budgetary and other 

decisions that impact the federal personnel system: (1) work with OPM to 

coordinate communication on government-wide human capital issues so 

that there is consistency, transparency, and completeness in information 

it provides to Congress and OMB; (2) discuss human capital initiatives in 

terms of how they affect the performance outcomes, efficiency, and 

effectiveness of the government; (3) regularly invite others within the 

human capital community—like leading researchers—to discuss their 

perspective and analysis of human capital issues at CHCO Council 

meetings; and (4) update the CHCO Council website to reflect the issue 

areas the council has identified as the highest priority human capital 

issues and how the council is addressing them. These ideas are 

consistent with leading practices that GAO identified in its prior work.

However, according to the 

CHCOs, the council is not carrying out this responsibility as well as it 

could. For example, the CHCOs told us they have not fully maximized 

existing partnerships and organizational structures to elevate 

government-wide human capital issues within the administration. They 

illustrated this point by noting how the CHCOs could do more to raise the 

visibility of human capital issues within PMC.

10

 9

Pub. L. No. 107-296, § 1303(b), 5 U.S.C. § 1401, note.

10GAO, Results-Oriented Government: Practices That Can Help Enhance and Sustain 

Collaboration among Federal Agencies, GAO-06-15 (Washington, D.C.: Oct. 21, 2005).
Page 9 GAO-14-168 Human Capital

The federal government’s efforts to enhance cybersecurity provide one 

example of the need for a coordinated approach to human capital issues. 

In 2011, we found there were multiple government-wide efforts underway 

to enhance the cybersecurity workforce, including initiatives from the 

Chief Information Officer’s Council, OPM, the National Institute of 

Standards and Technology, the Department of Homeland Security, and 

others.11 Enhancements were needed because even as threats to federal 

information technology infrastructure and systems continued to grow in 

number and sophistication, federal agencies’ progress in implementing 

key workforce planning practices for cybersecurity personnel was 

mixed.12

According to the CHCOs and OPM officials, when agencies coordinate 

their efforts they are better able to resolve government-wide challenges. 

For example, in September 2011, the CHCO Council created a working 

group that identified critical skills gaps and competency gaps in the 

federal government. OMB designated closing critical skills gaps as an 

interim cross-agency priority goal under the GPRA Modernization Act 

(GPRAMA).

We concluded that better coordination was crucial to costeffectively ensuring that the government has the people it needs to 

continue to deal with evolving cyber threats. We recommended agencies 

clarify roles and responsibilities, measure progress towards goals, and 

determine resources needed to accomplish agreed-upon activities. 

Agencies concurred with the majority of our recommendations and 

outlined steps to address them. For example, OPM concurred with our 

recommendation to coordinate with other agencies to consolidate and 

align efforts to define roles, responsibilities, skills, and competencies for 

the federal cybersecurity workforce. As of May 2014, we are reviewing 

OPM actions to address this recommendation.

13 In 2011, we identified the need to close government-wide 

and emerging critical skills gaps in our high risk series.14

 11GAO, Cybersecurity Human Capital: Initiatives Need Better Planning and Coordination, 

The CHCOs also 

cited the president’s initiative to improve the federal recruitment and hiring 

GAO-12-8 (Washington, D.C.: Nov. 29, 2011).

12GAO-13-283.

13Pub. L. No. 111-352, 124 Stat. 3866 (Jan. 4, 2011). GPRAMA updated the statutory 

framework for performance management in the federal government established under the 

Government Performance and Results Act of 1993 (GPRA), Pub. L. No. 103-62, 107 Stat. 

285 (Aug. 3, 1993). 

14GAO, High-Risk Series: An Update, GAO-11-278 (Washington, D.C.: February 2011).
Page 10 GAO-14-168 Human Capital

process which they said has helped agencies reduce the time it takes to 

hire applicants.

While the various actors within the human capital community may have 

informal or formal relationships, there is no single strategic plan that 

coordinates their efforts government-wide at a high level. Without a 

strategic plan that coordinates the various human capital initiatives, there 

is a risk that initiatives might be duplicative, not fully effective, or 

unaligned with the most pressing human capital challenges facing federal 

agencies. Key elements of a strategic plan include, for example, a 

statement of mission and goals, the strategies and resources needed to 

achieve those goals, and performance information to gauge progress. A 

strategic plan would have the additional benefit of providing a measure of 

continuity in the face of turnover on the part of CHCOs. According to the 

CHCO Council’s executive leadership, in the past year about one-third of 

CHCOs have left their positions. By clearly articulating specific, actionable 

goals, the roles and responsibilities of stakeholders in achieving them, 

and timeframes and other metrics to help ensure the entire effort stays on 

track, OPM and the CHCO Council will be better positioned to focus and 

coordinate the collective efforts of the federal personnel community on 

addressing key crosscutting human capital challenges.

In April 2009, we concluded that top agency leaders must integrate the 

human capital function into their agencies’ core planning and business 

activities.15

 15GAO, Human Capital: Sustained Attention to Strategic Human Capital Management 

Needed,

Yet, our analysis of the CHCOs’ discussion indicated that this 

was not always occurring. For example, several CHCOs said they were 

either not aware of or not included in the strategic planning process and 

the setting of performance goals at their agency. Although the CHCO Act 

required CHCOs to be involved in performance planning, several of the 

CHCOs said that this was not happening at their agencies. The CHCOs 

said an agency’s ability to achieve performance goals depends on the 

workforce planning strategies for which CHCOs are responsible. They 

said that if CHCOs are excluded from program deliberations, then agency 

decisions may not be fully informed by important data on whether the 

agency has the necessary skills, how it will obtain these skills, how long 

the skills will be needed, and how much it will cost to meet program goals.

GAO-09-632T (Washington, D.C.: Apr. 22, 2009).

Human Capital 

Decisions Are 

Uncoordinated

within Agencies
Page 11 GAO-14-168 Human Capital

According to some of the CHCOs, a key reason why they are not 

consistently informing agency decision making is because their offices do 

not have the capacity for such strategic human capital management 

activities as talent management, workforce planning, and promoting high 

performance and a results-oriented culture. Instead, these offices remain 

focused on transactional human resource activities like benefits and 

processing personnel actions. As a result, agency decision makers often 

do not seek out and draw upon the expertise of human capital experts to 

inform their deliberations. The Partnership for Public Service reported a 

similar finding in 2012 when it asked CHCOs if their respective agency’s 

leadership viewed the CHCO and the human resources staff as trusted 

business advisors versus transaction managers. Twenty-five percent of 

CHCOs responded “not at all” or to a “limited extent.”16

In our 2013 high risk update we found that the human resources 

specialist occupation was one of several government-wide, mission 

critical skill gaps.

Perhaps further 

reflecting the varying capabilities of agency human capital offices across 

government, some CHCOs said that agency leaders do not fully 

understand the potential for strategic human capital management and 

have not elevated the role of the human capital office to better support an 

agency’s operations and mission.

17

In our case illustrations, we identified examples of how human capital 

staff partner with other agency officials to align human capital 

management with mission execution.

Under OPM’s leadership, several steps have been 

taken as part of a cross agency group focused on improving the capacity 

of human resource specialists. For example, OPM reported that in fiscal 

year 2013, OPM increased registration in its Human Resources University 

(HR University) and validated career path guides for classification, 

recruitment and hiring policy, and employee relations. As part of our 

ongoing oversight of OPM’s and agencies’ efforts to close governmentwide mission critical skill gaps, we will continue to assess the progress 

being made in improving the human capital infrastructure within agencies 

needed to better support agencies’ planning and programmatic functions.

 16Partnership for Public Service, Bracing for Change: Chief Human Capital Officers 

Rethink Business as Usual (Washington, D.C.: August 2012).

17GAO-13-283.
Page 12 GAO-14-168 Human Capital

• Officials at the Department of State (State) said they developed and 

shared forecasts of workforce attrition, data on emerging skills gaps 

and cost estimates for addressing them through recruiting and 

retention efforts, and similar data with program officials. As a result, 

officials said program management has a better understanding of the 

role that strategic human capital management plays in meeting the 

agency’s mission. Moreover, program officials seek out and consider 

other workforce-related data when making key budget, acquisition, 

and technology investment decisions. Officials we spoke with said 

when State officials meet with congressional appropriators, both 

State’s human capital and budget officials are present to articulate 

how the agency prioritizes important initiatives.

• Human capital officials at the National Aeronautics and Space 

Administration (NASA) said they developed strong relationships with 

other functional areas to elevate the role of the human capital function 

across the agency. Officials said they sought out human capital staff 

when key decisions would be made and ensured they were providing 

them with details to understand how decisions would affect the 

agency’s workforce. By anticipating their needs and providing them 

valuable information, NASA officials said they demonstrated their 

value and have a trusted advisory role in the agency.

• A senior human capital official at the Department of Transportation 

said the agency worked for a decade to incorporate workforce 

planning data into program management decision making. For 

example, department-level human capital staff worked with programlevel officials on how to obtain, use, and interpret workforce data. 

Department-level human capital staff also conducted periodic trend 

analysis on workforce information for each program division and 

presented the findings on workforce risks and potential mitigation 

strategies. For example, after identifying a unit’s low employee morale 

survey scores and a high attrition rate, human capital staff worked 

with the unit to design a rotational program to provide new 

professional development opportunities aimed at improving morale 

and retaining key staff. According to this official, program division 

leaders find this analysis useful and have requested to have them 

more frequently.
Page 13 GAO-14-168 Human Capital

Our analysis of the CHCO’s discussion identified that agencies have 

many common human capital challenges such as the need to close 

mission critical skills gaps, but they tend to work on them independently 

without looking to enterprise or “whole of government” solutions. 

Enterprise solutions, in this context, integrate the efforts of multiple 

departments and agencies to address crosscutting human capital 

challenges more effectively by leveraging their expertise, experience, 

technology, and other resources. The CHCO Council was established to

improve coordination across federal agencies on personnel issues, which 

should include working with agencies to develop and implement 

enterprise solutions. The CHCOs identified a number of reasons for a 

lack of coordination on common problems. First, federal budgeting and 

account structures reinforce the prevailing tradition of controlling agency 

resources within a single agency. This process does not create incentives 

to share resources across agencies. Second, agencies may be reluctant 

to contribute resources to a government-wide approach because they 

may not get an equitable return on their investment, or may get a product 

that does not fit their needs. As a result, the CHCOs told us that agencies 

tend to work independently to address interagency human capital 

management issues and do not always fully leverage lessons learned by 

other agencies.

More recently, however, the CHCOs said there is a greater willingness to 

work with other agencies to address crosscutting human capital issues. 

This was due, in part, to the fiscal challenges agencies are facing. In 

particular they noted that while government-wide personnel management 

challenges have specific implications for each agency, there are 

opportunities for federal agencies to leverage resources to more 

efficiently address challenges that cross agencies boundaries. As we 

concluded in our February 2014 report, agencies that collaborated 

effectively were able to leverage technological resources to share 

information and the expertise of other agency officials to improve their 

programs and control spending.18

Across government, there are a number of examples of agencies and 

OPM initiating enterprise solutions to address crosscutting issues. For 

example, shared-services centers could create economies of scale by 

 18GAO, Managing for Results: Implementation Approaches Used to Enhance 

Collaboration in Interagency Groups, GAO-14-220 (Washington, D.C.: Feb. 14, 2014).

Enterprise Solutions 

Needed to Address 

Shared Human Capital 

Challenges
Page 14 GAO-14-168 Human Capital

centrally locating or consolidating personnel functions into a single 

service provider. In 2009, OPM completed an initiative that consolidated 

26 federal payroll systems into four shared-service centers and 

standardized payroll policies and procedures, an effort they estimated 

would save the federal government $1.1 billion over 10 years. Shared 

services also could improve the efficiency of administrative services 

within a single agency. State, for example, has consolidated some of its 

human resource functions into a shared-services center in Charleston, 

South Carolina, which, according to State officials, has reduced real 

estate costs as some of these activities were formerly housed in the more 

expensive Washington, D.C., metro area. State’s human resource 

shared-service’s center administers the agency’s telework, transit benefit, 

and employee retirement programs. The agency is also considering 

shifting more personnel functions to the center.

The Department of Treasury’s (Treasury) workforce-planning consortium 

is an example of an agency-led multi-agency enterprise solution. 

Treasury has shared its practices and invited speakers from other 

agencies, such as the Department of Interior, to share their workforce 

planning models with representatives from several interested agencies. 

Several CHCOs said that the consortium meetings were a useful venue to 

share information about workforce planning best practices and lessons 

learned, and furthered the development of enterprise solutions.

OPM has also established mechanisms to facilitate the sharing of 

practices that address crosscutting human capital challenges. For 

example, OPM’s Human Resources Solutions division offers a variety of 

fee-for-service products and services to help agencies in such areas as 

recruiting, hiring, performance management, and professional 

development (in January 2014, OPM announced plans to downsize this 

office because of budget constraints). Similarly, OPM’s HR University 

provides free and some fee-based online resources training and 

professional development materials to HR officials across government. 

Recent HR University topics have included training and leadership 

development, hiring reform, and addressing and resolving poor 

performance. According to OPM officials, the training sessions often 

feature officials from other agencies to discuss how they have 

implemented the broader human capital initiatives. We found in 

September 2012 that many agencies independently purchase or develop 
Page 15 GAO-14-168 Human Capital

training for the same government-wide mandated courses.19

The CHCOs highlighted human resource information technology and 

strategic workforce planning as two areas that have been long-standing 

issues ripe for cross-organizational collaboration.

We 

concluded that OPM had an opportunity to reduce duplicative and 

inefficient training investments by leveraging existing training resources 

government-wide. According to OPM officials, HR University provides a 

model that can help this coordination, resulting in cost savings and 

helping to standardize some mandatory training courses across 

government. OPM officials said that OPM is also partnering with the Chief 

Learning Officers (CLO) Council to enhance HR University’s on-demand 

learning platform to create enterprise learning solutions to save money 

and increase access to training across government. According to OPM, 

this partnership will create sessions on mandatory training, employee 

onboarding, and management and leadership development. The CHCOs 

said that they could also use the CHCO Council’s website more 

effectively to identify common challenges and to facilitate the sharing of 

agency leading practices to mitigate those challenges. The CHCO 

Council’s executive leadership said it is working to update the website to 

show how the council is prioritizing issues where agencies need 

assistance.

Human Resources Information Technology (HR IT). The CHCOs said 

agencies could be missing cost savings opportunities by not coordinating 

HR IT investments within and across agencies. They said much of the 

data and functionality provided by HR IT systems, such as personnel 

action processing, performance management, and compensation and 

benefits, are needed by all agencies. Additionally, the CHCOs said 

agencies are individually procuring identical systems—at times even at 

different components within a single agency—rather than leveraging the 

purchasing power of multiple agencies to negotiate better prices or 

services or use shared service centers. Several CHCOs said many HR IT 

systems are antiquated, create functional challenges, and need urgent 

upgrades. Within agencies, the CHCOs said current HR IT systems do 

not interface well to one another and they are frequently unable to query 

needed information. We found in 2013 that agencies spent more than 

 19GAO, Federal Training Investments: Office of Personnel Management and Agencies 

Can Do More to Ensure Cost-Effective Decisions, GAO-12-878 (Washington, D.C.: Sept. 

17, 2012).
Page 16 GAO-14-168 Human Capital

$2.4 billion on 622 HR IT investments in fiscal year 2011. We identified 

hundreds of investments that provided similar functions. We also 

identified agencies that did not routinely assess their IT investment 

portfolios to identify and reduce duplicative systems.20

Strategic Workforce Planning. Several of the CHCOs said agencies are 

not consistently leveraging lessons learned or collaborating to address 

difficulties they encounter with workforce planning models. We have 

found that organizations in both the public and private sectors use 

strategic workforce planning to help ensure they have the capacity to 

meet both current and future mission requirements. Preparing a strategic 

workforce plan encourages agency managers and stakeholders to 

systematically consider what is to be done, when and how it will be done, 

what skills will be needed, and how to gauge progress and results. In 

2012 we found that some federal agencies, such as the Environmental 

Protection Agency, the Department of the Interior’s Forest Service and 

the Department of Homeland Security, continue to struggle with 

developing effective strategic workforce plans.

We concluded that 

without this information, the government may continue to maintain similar 

IT investments. The CHCO Council’s executive leadership said 

addressing HR IT was one of the council’s major goals for 2014. Officials 

said the council was chartering a new working group in 2014 and would 

leverage the efforts of prior OPM and CHCO efforts.

21 Agencies can use a 

variety of models to conduct workforce planning, but all of the models 

generally share common steps including examining future issues that 

may affect the agency’s ability to attain its strategic goals, determining 

skills needed to meet those goals, selecting and implementing human 

capital strategies to address issues and skills gaps, and evaluating the 

success of human capital strategies.22

 20GAO, Information Technology: OMB and Agencies Need to Focus Continued Attention 

on Eliminating Duplicative Investments,

Though agency approaches to 

workforce planning vary depending on agency needs and mission, the 

CHCOs said agencies are not consistently accessing or using the 

strategies and models that some agencies have found useful. Some 

GAO-13-685T (Washington, D.C.: June 11, 2013).

21GAO, Workforce Planning: Interior, EPA, and the Forest Service Should Strengthen 

Linkages to Their Strategic Plans and Improve Evaluation, GAO-10-413 (Washington, 

D.C.: Mar. 31, 2010).

22GAO, Human Capital: Key Principles for Effective Workforce Planning, GAO-04-39

(Washington, D.C.: Dec. 11, 2003). 
Page 17 GAO-14-168 Human Capital

CHCOs said a more systematic approach to workforce planning would be 

helpful, but OPM’s workforce planning tools were too high level for their 

needs.

The CHCOs and OPM discussed two tools OPM has developed to help 

agencies with workforce planning, yet the CHCOs expressed reservations 

about both. First, the Human Capital Assessment and Accountability 

Framework (HCAAF) was designed in part, according to OPM, to enable 

agencies to transform the federal workplace into high-performing arenas 

where every employee understands and is able to maximize his or her 

contribution to agency mission. While acknowledging that HCAAF could 

be used for workforce planning, some CHCOs at our forum said that they 

viewed HCAAF as a report card focused on compliance rather than 

guidance. In 2013, OPM rolled out a revised HCAAF, now known as the 

Human Capital Framework, which, according to OPM officials, should 

make the framework more flexible, more practical, easier to understand, 

and more useful to agencies.

Second, OPM officials said they are piloting a process initiative—

HRStat—that represents, among other benefits, a promising approach to 

improved workforce planning. One of its purposes is to assist agencies 

that have little or no workforce planning capability to identify key human 

capital data for collection and analysis to understand trends and actions 

that can improve agency performance. Similar to the CHCOs’ concerns 

about HCAAF, pilot agencies recommended OPM safeguard against 

using HRStat as an accountability mechanism or it will quickly become a 

compliance exercise versus a meaningful tool to engage agencies in 

performance improvement. In 2013, we concluded that data-driven 

performance review meetings–such as those used by HRStat 

practitioners–should be both a leadership strategy to drive performance 

and a mechanism to hold managers accountable for diagnosing 

performance problems and identifying strategies for improvement.23 As of 

December 2013, 16 agencies are participating in the HRStat pilot. OPM 

officials said they plan to expand the pilot government-wide in 2014.

 23GAO, Managing for Results: Data-Driven Performance Reviews Show Promise But 

Agencies Should Explore How to Involve Other Relevant Agencies, GAO-13-228

(Washington D.C.: Feb. 27, 2013). 
Page 18 GAO-14-168 Human Capital

For agencies to meet their vital missions, their human capital policies and 

programs need to promote agile talent management. An agile workforce 

is, as noted in one study, one that ensures “the right people, with the right 

skills, are assigned to the right roles at the right time and at the right 

cost...” and that “can quickly be reconfigured to suit an organization’s 

needs.”24

The CHCOs stated that it is difficult for agencies to identify the range of 

skills within their existing workforces. According to the CHCOs, most 

federal human resources systems do not identify employee skills in any 

detail below their occupational series, title, and grade. As a result, the 

CHCOs said they do not have the information necessary to effectively 

leverage the existing skills in their workforce, to keep individuals with 

certain skills from leaving, or to identify what additional training or 

recruitment efforts to undertake. The CHCOs said skill visibility is also 

needed when forming temporary, cross-agency task teams to address a 

specific agency issue or challenge.

However, our analysis of the CHCO forum comments found that 

agencies’ talent management tools lack two key ingredients important for 

developing an agile workforce, namely the ability to: (1) identify the skills 

available in their existing workforces, and (2) to move people based on 

skills needs within the organization and across agencies.

Some agencies have developed skill inventory systems intended to 

provide skill visibility within their workforce. For example, the U.S. 

Department of Agriculture has a searchable internal tool that allows 

employees to post their skills and competencies such as foreign language 

fluency or technical certifications. Department officials said they use this 

tool to help focus their succession planning and training efforts on areas 

of need, as well as to help employees plan for their own career 

development. The Environmental Protection Agency officials said they are 

piloting an online skills marketplace to align people and their skills with 

projects. Managers post short-term detail opportunities requesting people 

with certain skills to address high-priority agency needs. We previously 

recommended that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) develop a 

skills inventory as part of its human resources information technology 

 24Rebecca L. Ray, Charles Mitchell, Amy Lui Abel, Patti Phillips of The Conference Board; 

and Emily Lawson, Bryan Hancock, Allison Watson, and Brooke Weddle of McKinsey & 

Company. The State of Human Capital 2012: False Summit: Why the Human Capital 

Function Still Has Far to Go. Report Number: TCB_R-1501-12-RR (McKinsey & Company 

and The Conference Board, October 2012), 13.

More Agile Talent 

Management Needed to 

Address Inflexibilities in 

the Current System

Greater Visibility over

Skills Needed
Page 19 GAO-14-168 Human Capital

modernization efforts. In September 2013, FDA completed a skills 

inventory tool designed to inform the agency’s recruitment and retention 

programs.25

The CHCOs reported that a lack of staff mobility in the civil service 

structure makes it difficult for agencies to align their workforces with 

evolving missions. The CHCOs said job qualifications often emphasize 

experience over the underlying skills needed, making it challenging to 

transfer individuals across occupations or agencies. In contrast, if the 

occupational structure was broader and more focused on skills or 

competencies, it would be easier to transfer qualified individuals who 

have the necessary core skills and who could then be easily trained on 

the mission-specific aspects of the position.

The CHCOs said increasing staff mobility could improve agencies’ ability 

to meet emerging or temporary mission needs more cost effectively than 

hiring employees. The CHCOs said there has been some success at 

transferring individuals during times of crisis. For example, in response to 

the 2010 Deepwater Horizon spill in the Gulf of Mexico, several agencies 

were involved with cleanup efforts. But the CHCOs said there were other 

opportunities for agencies to share employees within and across 

organizational boundaries. For example, staff mobility could help 

agencies better address interagency goals and challenges, or to plan or 

implement short-term or one-time initiatives. Increased mobility could also 

be used to permanently transfer employees whose skills are surplus at 

one agency to other agencies with a shortage of those skills.

One way of increasing staff mobility mentioned by the CHCOs was 

through rotational opportunities. We concluded that effective interagency 

rotational assignments can achieve collaboration-related results—such as 

building interagency networks—but such programs must be a “win-win”

for the individuals and organizations involved to be effective. For 

example, rotational programs must address issues related to the 

employee’s career progression, the temporary diminishment of the home 

organization’s workforce capabilities, and—particularly in an era of highly 

 25GAO, Information Technology: FDA Needs to Establish Key Plans and Processes for 

Guiding Systems Modernization Efforts, GAO-09-523 (Washington, D.C.: June 2, 2009). 

The recommendation was closed as implemented.

Greater Skills Mobility Needed 

within and across Agencies
Page 20 GAO-14-168 Human Capital

constrained resources—the reluctance of managers to let their high 

performers go on interagency rotations.26

Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) officials said they use internal 

rotations to respond to emergency situations and to meet emerging 

agency needs. For example, in response to the 2011 earthquake and 

tsunami that damaged the nuclear power reactors at the Fukushima 

Daiichi facility in Japan, NRC used the rotation program to deploy staff 

from its regional offices to understand the lessons from Fukushima and 

review its own regulatory approach to ensuring the safety of America’s 

reactors. Officials said NRC’s rotational program contributed to the 

agency’s ability to identify the people and skills needed to address the 

rapid response to the event. They also said they use internal rotational 

assignments to develop greater overall capability of the staff to better 

accomplish the mission of the agency. In rotational assignments at NRC, 

employees are generally assigned to other functions and components 

within the agency for 6 months or less to broaden staff capabilities. 

According to NRC, support from senior leadership for staff rotations is 

critical. Officials said the Executive Director for Operations, NRC’s chief 

operations officer, helps create a cultural environment that encourages 

supervisors to allow staff to rotate to other areas, recognizing the longterm benefits to the agency. NRC reports that these internal rotational 

assignments not only help improve the agency’s workforce capabilities, 

but also allow interested employees an opportunity to gain new 

experiences and responsibilities that are important factors for maintaining 

employee satisfaction and retention.

In March 2014, OPM and the Environmental Protection Agency launched 

GovConnect, a pilot program intended to model a more mobile, agile, and 

skilled workforce. Through GovConnect, agencies will volunteer to pilot 

three models: (1) GovProject, a management-driven model to support 

rapid deployment of cross-agency action teams to respond to complex 

problems, (2) GovStart, an employee-driven model enabling individuals 

with desired skillsets to identify and support initiatives through part-time 

teams, and (3) GovCloud, a skill deployment system assigning individuals 

on a project-by-project basis to address critical skills gaps.

 26GAO, Interagency Collaboration: State and Army Personnel Rotation Programs Can 

Build on Positive Results with Additional Preparation and Evaluation, GAO-12-386

(Washington, D.C.: Mar. 9, 2012).
Page 21 GAO-14-168 Human Capital

OPM makes available a range of different human capital tools, such as 

workforce planning models and guidance in a variety of different formats. 

According to OPM, it is responsible for assisting agencies with all aspects 

of human capital management. In this capacity, OPM provides tools and 

guidance to agencies through multiple formats, including its website,

webinars, in-person training, and policies and user feedback in some 

cases. Moreover, OPM officials said they are increasingly providing 

training through webcasts that agencies can post on their internal sites to 

encourage human capital staff to view. However, the CHCOs said OPM 

needed to do more to raise awareness and assess the utility of the tools 

and guidance it provides to agencies. The CHCOs said they were either 

unfamiliar with the tools or guidance, or they fell short of their agency’s 

needs. As a result, a key resource for helping agencies improve the 

capacity of their personnel offices is likely being underutilized.

For example, the CHCOs identified three areas where additional outreach 

and evaluation of existing tools would be helpful: (1) applying 

classification standards, (2) aligning employee performance with 

organizational goals, and (3) workforce planning. OPM said it meets 

quarterly with agency classification officials to discuss classification 

standards and assist with agency classification questions—including 

classifying evolving occupations. An OPM official said OPM offers 

guidance and tools for agencies to align agency strategic goals with 

individual performance goals and plans including a handbook and 

corresponding HR University course on OPM’s website.

However, in applying classification standards, the CHCOs said they could 

use more help aligning classification standards with position descriptions 

than currently provided. They noted that it was difficult to write position 

descriptions for evolving occupations, such as those related to 

technology, and some agency missions require new skills that are hard to 

obtain within the existing classification standards. Despite these quarterly 

meetings, CHCOs said they are not always aware of updated policy and 

guidance and therefore some agencies continue to use the outdated 

standards. The CHCOs said if the position description and job 

announcements are based on outdated standards, they are less likely to 

reflect the specific skills needed, making it challenging for agencies to 

recruit and hire the right individuals. Similarly, CHCOs said it was difficult 

for agencies to align agency strategic goals with individual performance 

goals and plans. They stated that they needed additional assistance from 

OPM to effectively implement this guidance. Finally, CHCOs said OPM 

evaluates agencies’ workforce planning and understands the challenges 

OPM Needs to 

Ensure Its Human 

Capital Tools and 

Guidance Are 

Meeting Agencies’

Needs
Page 22 GAO-14-168 Human Capital

that remain in agencies, but is not doing enough to identify and share 

effective workforce planning practices across the government.

OPM officials acknowledged that OPM had not evaluated the tools and 

guidance it provided to agencies on these issues, did not know the extent 

to which the CHCOs were unfamiliar with the tools and guidance, or if the 

tools and guidance were meeting agency requirements. OPM officials 

also said that in some cases, the tools were newly developed and their 

effectiveness could not yet be measured. Program evaluation guidance 

states that evaluations can play a key role in program planning, 

management, and oversight by providing feedback—on both program 

design and execution— to program managers, among others.27 Going 

forward, consistent with OPM’s mission to assist agencies’ human capital 

efforts, it will be important for OPM to better understand whether and how 

agencies use the assistance it provides. Indeed, soliciting feedback on 

such topics as content, delivery method, and timing would help ensure 

that this important information was being fully utilized.

Current fiscal pressures are spurring agencies to consider creative and 

innovative approaches that might have been dismissed in the past. With 

respect to strategic human capital management, the CHCOs we spoke 

with identified a range of federal human capital management challenges, 

many of which have been long-standing across government. At the same 

time, they also highlighted a newfound urgency and willingness to 

collaborate across agency boundaries to address those challenges. While 

not an exhaustive list, the CHCOs’ three overarching human capital 

challenges—(1) lack of coordination in a fragmented human capital 

community, (2) limited enterprise or “whole of government” approaches to 

address crosscutting challenges, such as HR IT and workforce planning, 

and (3) a lack of agile talent management—represent an important 

framework to begin prioritizing and modernizing current human capital 

management practices to meet the agencies’ missions. Moreover, given 

the magnitude of the government’s personnel challenges and agencies’

limited resources, it is critical that OPM’s investments in tools, guidance, 

and other resources are meeting agencies’ needs and are being fully 

utilized.

 27GAO, Program Evaluation: Strategies to Facilitate Agencies’ Use of Evaluation in 

Program Management and Policy Making, GAO-13-570 (Washington, D.C.: June 26, 

2013).

Conclusions
Page 23 GAO-14-168 Human Capital

To create a more effective human capital system that is more responsive 

to managing priorities and future workforce needs, we recommend that 

the Director of OPM, in conjunction with the CHCO Council, take the 

following four actions:

1. Strengthen OPM’s coordination and leadership of government-wide 

human capital issues to ensure government-wide initiatives are 

coordinated, decision makers have all relevant information, and there 

is greater continuity in the human capital community for key reforms. 

Such actions could include:

• developing a government-wide human capital strategic plan that, 

among other things, would establish strategic priorities, time 

frames, responsibilities, and metrics to better align the efforts of 

members of the federal human capital community with 

government-wide human capital goals and issues; and

• coordinating communication on government-wide human capital 

issues with other members of the human capital community so 

that there is greater consistency, transparency, and completeness 

in exchanging and using information by stakeholders and decision 

makers.

2. Explore the feasibility of expanded use of enterprise solutions to more 

efficiently and effectively address shared or government-wide human 

capital challenges. Such actions could include:

• seeking cost savings and improved functionality through 

coordinated government-wide HR IT planning and acquisition,

• seeking agency input to ensure OPM’s workforce planning tools 

provide effective guidance for agencies, and

• sharing workforce planning lessons learned and successful 

models across the government.

3. Review the extent to which new capabilities are needed to promote 

agile talent management. Such actions could include developing or 

sharing:

• tools, resources, and methods to help identify skills gaps and 

surpluses that can inform agency recruitment, retention, and 

training needs; and

• mechanisms for increasing staff mobility within an agency and 

government-wide to assist agencies in aligning their workforces 

with evolving needs.

Recommendations for 

Executive Action
Page 24 GAO-14-168 Human Capital

4. Ensure agencies are getting the guidance and tools that they need by 

evaluating the communication strategy for and effectiveness of 

relevant tools, guidance, or leading practices created by OPM or the 

agencies to address crosscutting human capital management 

challenges.

We provided a draft of this product to the Director of OPM for comment. 

In the written comments of the Acting Associate Director for Employee 

Services, which are reproduced in appendix III, OPM incorporated 

comments from the CHCO Council. OPM and the CHCO Council 

concurred with our recommendations. OPM also provided technical 

comments, which were incorporated as appropriate.

With respect to the coordination of government-wide human capital 

initiatives, OPM provided examples of working groups and other efforts to 

address issues such as closing skills gaps and developing HRStat, many 

of which are described in our report. Further, although the CHCO Council 

agreed that more could be done to coordinate, share resources, and 

explore talent management strategies, the CHCO Council disagreed with 

our finding that the human capital community was highly fragmented. Our 

analysis of the comments made by the CHCO Council found that the 

human capital community is fragmented and that our recommendation for 

a government-wide human capital strategic plan could help to coordinate 

these efforts to ensure initiatives were not duplicative and were aligned 

with the most pressing human capital challenges. A government-wide 

strategic plan should include input from the many participants in the 

human capital community—reflecting the different perspectives, missions, 

and resources of these organizations. 

In response to our recommendation for greater enterprise solutions, OPM 

said that in 2014 it began working with the CHCO Council to refine the 

strategic workforce planning method that the CHCO Council will use to 

identify enterprise-wide occupations and competencies for continued 

focus, and that all agencies will use to identify and close their own internal 

skill gaps. When developing these tools, OPM should consider agencies’ 

capacity to implement them to ensure they are put to their best use. 

Further, OPM also said its March 2014 Strategic Information Technology 

Plan provides a strategy for aligning human capital systems and steps in 

the human capital life cycle. Given the past barriers to developing 

enterprise solutions for HR IT—such as agency specific resources and 

priorities—it will be critical that this new effort leverages the lessons 

learned from past efforts and individual agencies HR IT systems. In 

Agency Comments 

and Our Evaluation
Page 25 GAO-14-168 Human Capital

response to our recommendation for greater agile talent management, 

OPM provided information about GovConnect, a pilot program launched 

in March 2014 and intended to create a talent exchange and networking 

capabilities within agencies. We revised the report to reflect this effort.

Finally, in response to our recommendation that OPM should do more to 

evaluate the communication strategy and effectiveness of the tools and 

guidance provided to agencies, OPM said it would expand its 

collaboration with agencies to design and deliver the tools agencies need 

through use of the LAB@OPM, OPM’s innovation lab. We recently 

reported that OPM needs clear and specific outcome measures to help 

meet its goals of enhancing skills in innovation and supporting projectbased problem solving. Otherwise, OPM’s innovation lab efforts may not 

be able to demonstrate the types of results initially envisioned. It will be 

important for OPM to understand how the tools and guidance it develops 

through the innovation lab and other methods are being used by 

agencies.28 

As agreed with your office, unless you publicly announce the contents of 

this report earlier, we plan no further distribution until 30 days from the 

report date. At that time, we will send copies to the Committee on 

Oversight and Government Reform. In addition, the report will be 

available at no charge on the GAO website at http://www.gao.gov.

If you or your staff have any questions about this report please contact 

me at (202) 512-2757 or goldenkoffr@gao.gov. Contact points for our 

Offices of Congressional Relations and Public Affairs may be found on 

the last page of this report. GAO staff who made key contributions to this 

report are listed in appendix III.

Robert Goldenkoff

Director

Strategic Issues

 28 GAO, Office of Personnel Management: Agency Needs to Improve Outcome Measures 

to Demonstrate the Value of Its Innovation Lab, GAO-14-306. (Washington, D.C.: March 

31, 2014).
Appendix I: Objectives, Scope, and 

Methodology

Page 26 GAO-14-168 Human Capital

To assess the key strategic human capital challenges federal agencies 

face in an era of highly constrained resources and identify effective 

strategies for addressing them, we convened an expert panel of Chief 

Human Capital Officers (CHCO) or their designees from agencies of the 

CHCO Council. Throughout this report, we refer to the expert panel as the 

“CHCO forum.” Twenty-five of the 27 CHCO Council members 

participated in the forum. The Small Agency Council and the Department 

of Labor did not send a CHCO, Deputy CHCO, or representative to the 

forum.

Participants in the forum were asked: (1) to identify and prioritize the key 

strategic human capital challenges federal agencies face in an era of flat 

or declining budgets and effective practices for addressing them, and (2) 

the extent to which the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) ensures 

agencies have the tools and guidance needed to mitigate human capital 

challenges associated with flat or declining budgets and whether 

agencies find these useful. Through a facilitated discussion, CHCOs 

identified five challenges in meeting long-term workforce needs in an era 

of limited budgets. To prioritize the list of challenges, we used a nominal 

group technique in which CHCOs scored each challenge from one (most 

important) to five (least important). After prioritizing the list of challenges, 

the full forum was broken out into smaller subgroups for facilitated 

discussions of (1) the reasons for the challenge, (2) effective strategies 

for addressing it, and (3) OPM’s role in helping to mitigate it. Break-out 

groups consisted of representation from at least three agencies and 

CHCOs were able to self-select the discussion group in which they 

wished to participate. Upon completion of the facilitated discussion, a 

representative from each group reported a summary of key discussion 

points to the larger group for comment and refinement.

We used the long-table method to analyze the forum discussion, including 

the results of the sub-group discussions as compared to the requirements 

of OPM and the CHCO Council, discussions with nongovernmental 

groups and relevant literature. Through this analysis, we collaboratively 

identified the major themes through repeated analysis and discussion of 

detailed notes from the main forum and subgroup sessions. We used this 

method to identify the major human capital challenges discussed in the 

forum. We also used it for forum discussions related to the strategies for 

addressing human capital management problems, and to assess OPM’s 

role in providing assistance to mitigate the challenges. For additional 

perspectives on strategies addressing federal human capital challenges, 

we reviewed our recent work on leading practices for collaboration and 

our other relevant work on federal management.

Appendix I: Objectives, Scope, and 

Methodology
Appendix I: Objectives, Scope, and 

Methodology

Page 27 GAO-14-168 Human Capital

As a complement to the human capital management challenges and 

strategies presented at the CHCO forum, we reviewed literature and 

interviewed nongovernmental organizations (NGO) that study federal 

human capital management issues. The NGOs included the Partnership 

for Public Service, the National Academy of Public Administration, IBM 

Center for the Business of Government, the Senior Executive 

Association, and the International Public Management Association for 

Human Resources. We also interviewed experts from academia and 

reviewed prior GAO reports. We selected the NGOs and experts we 

interviewed by conducting a literature search and reviewing human 

capital research to identify those who had published relevant work. In 

some cases, interviewees referred us to other organizations or individuals 

that had particular expertise on a particular topic.

We developed case illustrations of leading human capital management 

practices at four federal agencies. In selecting case study agencies, we 

considered quantitative and qualitative criteria including: (1) trends in 

discretionary budgets (real dollars) from fiscal years 2004 to 2011 to 

identify agencies with flat or declining budgets, (2) retirement and 

voluntary resignation rates from fiscal years 2010 to 2011, (3) agency 

rankings for employee satisfaction with strategic management and 

leadership on the 2012 Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey, and (4)

expert recommendations from the NGO interviews. Based on these 

criteria, we selected the following agencies for case study: the National 

Aeronautics and Space Administration, the Nuclear Regulatory 

Commission, the Department of State, and the Department of 

Transportation.

To assess the extent to which OPM ensures agencies have the tools, 

such as workforce planning models, guidance, and assistance that the 

CHCOs considered most important to mitigate human capital challenges 

associated with highly constrained resources, we asked the CHCOs to 

describe the tools and guidance OPM provides to address key human 

capital challenges identified during the CHCO forum session, their level of 

satisfaction with them, and ways those tools and guidance could be 

strengthened. We reviewed documentation of guidance and tools that 

OPM provides to agencies to assist them with managing the key human 

capital challenges articulated by the CHCO forum. We also interviewed 

OPM officials about mechanisms they use to: (1) identify the need for new 

guidance and tools from agencies, and (2) collect feedback from agencies 

about the usefulness of existing guidance and tools.
Appendix II: Interactive Graphic Information

Page 28 GAO-14-168 Human Capital

Figure 2: The Federal Human Capital Community Is Fragmented (Print Version)

Text on Graphic Rollover Text on Graphic

Office of Management and Budget The Office of Management and Budget (OMB): (1) works with executive agencies to 

prepare the President’s budget request; (2) oversees agency performance, federal 

procurement, financial management, information technology; and (3) coordinates and 

reviews all significant federal regulations by executive agencies.

Chief Human Capital Officers Council The Chief Human Capital Officers Council (CHCO Council) advises and coordinates the 

activities of members’ agencies on such matters as:

• the modernization of human resources systems,

• improved quality of human resources information, and

• legislation affecting human resources operations and organizations.

The council is chaired by the Director of OPM, vice-chaired by the Deputy Director for 

Management at OMB, and comprised of the CHCOs at federal departments and others 

designated by the Director of OPM.

Office of Personnel Management The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) provides human resources, leadership, and 

support to federal agencies to recruit and hire, to train and motivate employees, and to 

promote an inclusive workforce defined by diverse perspectives. OPM develops policy for 

federal human resources departments and ensures it is properly implemented. 

Appendix II: Interactive Graphic Information
Appendix II: Interactive Graphic Information

Page 29 GAO-14-168 Human Capital

Text on Graphic Rollover Text on Graphic

Federal Agencies/Chief Human Capital 

Officers

The Chief Human Capital Officers Act of 2002, enacted as part of the Homeland Security 

Act of 2002 (Pub. L. No. 107-296) on November 25, 2002, required the heads of 24 

executive departments and agencies to appoint or designate CHCOs. Each CHCO 

advises and assists his or her agency on all human resources management issues, 

including selecting, developing, training, and managing a high-quality, productive 

workforce in accordance with merit system principles. Some agencies beyond those 24 

executive departments and agencies also have CHCOs.

Labor Unions Labor unions allow employees to bargain with agency management over many matters 

affecting working conditions. Some unions also coordinate legislative and political action 

programs to monitor issues that impact the government workforce.

Federal Management Councils Presidential Management Council (PMC): Chaired by the Deputy Director for 

Management of OMB, PMC consists of chief operating officers of executive branch 

agencies, the OPM Director, the General Services Administration Administrator, and 

others. PMC advises the President and OMB on government reform initiatives, provides 

performance and management leadership throughout the executive branch, and oversees 

implementation of government-wide management policies and programs.

Chief Acquisition Officers (CAO) Council: Chaired by Deputy Director for Management

at OMB and comprised of CAOs and defense procurement executives. The CAO Council 

is the principal interagency forum for monitoring and improving the federal acquisition 

system.

Chief Financial Officers (CFO) Council: Chaired by Deputy Director for Management at 

OMB and consisting of the Controller for the Office of Federal Financial Management at 

OMB, the Fiscal Assistant Secretary of Treasury, and the CFOs from executive agencies, 

the CFOC works to improve financial management in the U.S. Government.

Chief Information Officers Council (CIOC): Chaired by Deputy Director for Management 

at OMB and consisting of CIOs from executive agencies, the CIOC serves as the principal 

interagency forum for improving practices in the design, acquisition, modernization, use, 

development, sharing, operation and performance of federal government agency 

information resources.

Chief Learning Officers (CLO) Council: CLOs formed an informal community of practice 

who meet periodically to share best practices, create learning opportunities, and discuss 

and collaborate on high-level agency strategic and operational issues affecting the federal 

learning and workforce development community.

Performance Improvement Council (PIC): The PIC, composed of the Performance 

Improvement Officers of federal agencies and departments as well as senior OMB 

officials, facilitates information exchange among agencies to improve the performance of 

Federal programs. 
Appendix III: Comments from the

Office of Personnel Management

Page 30 GAO-14-168 Human Capital

Appendix III: Comments from the

Office of Personnel Management
Appendix III: Comments from the

Office of Personnel Management

Page 31 GAO-14-168 Human Capital
Appendix III: Comments from the

Office of Personnel Management

Page 32 GAO-14-168 Human Capital
Appendix III: Comments from the

Office of Personnel Management

Page 33 GAO-14-168 Human Capital
Appendix III: Comments from the

Office of Personnel Management

Page 34 GAO-14-168 Human Capital
Appendix III: Comments from the

Office of Personnel Management

Page 35 GAO-14-168 Human Capital
Appendix IV: GAO Contact and Staff 

Acknowledgments

Page 36 GAO-14-168 Human Capital

Robert Goldenkoff, (202) 512-2757 or goldenkoffr@gao.gov.

In addition to the individual named above, Chelsa Gurkin, Assistant 

Director; Shea Bader, Analyst-in-Charge; Jeffrey DeMarco; Karin 

Fangman; Rebecca Rose O’Connor; Terry Richardson; and Rebecca 

Shea made major contributions to this report.

Appendix IV: GAO Contact and Staff 

Acknowledgments

GAO Contact

Staff 

Acknowledgments
Related GAO Products

Page 37 GAO-14-168 Human Capital

Federal Workforce: Recent Trends in Federal Civilian Employment and 

Compensation. GAO-14-215. Washington, D.C.: Jan. 29, 2014.

Federal Employees: Opportunities Exist to Strengthen Performance 

Management Pilot. GAO-13-755. Washington, D.C.: Sept. 12, 2013.

2013 Annual Report: Actions Needed to Reduce Fragmentation, Overlap, 

and Duplication and Achieve Other Financial Benefits. GAO-13-279SP. 

Washington, D.C.: Apr. 9, 2013.

High-Risk Series: An Update. GAO-13-283. Washington, D.C.: February 

2013.

Human Capital Management: Effectively Implementing Reforms and 

Closing Critical Skills Gaps are Key to Addressing Federal Workforce 

Challenges. GAO-12-1023T. Washington, D.C.: Sept. 19, 2012.

Federal Training Investments: OPM and Agencies Can Do More to 

Ensure Cost-Effective Decisions. GAO-12-878. Washington, D.C.: Sept. 

17, 2012.

Human Capital: HHS and EPA Can Improve Practices Under Special 

Hiring Authorities.GAO-12-692. Washington, D.C.: July 9, 2012.

Cybersecurity and Human Capital: Initiatives Need Better Planning and 

Coordination. GAO-12-8. Washington, D.C.: Nov. 29, 2011.

Information Technology: OMB Needs to Improve Its Guidance on Its 

Investments. GAO-11-826. Washington, D.C.: Sept. 29, 2011.

Federal Work/Life Programs: Agencies Generally Satisfied with OPM 

Assistance, but More Tracking and Information Sharing Needed. 

GAO-11-137. Washington, D.C.: Dec. 16, 2010.

Human Capital: Transforming Federal Recruiting and Hiring Efforts. 

GAO-08-762T. Washington, D.C.: May 8, 2008.

Human Capital: Selected Agencies’ Statutory Authorities Could Offer 

Options in Developing a Framework for Governmentwide Reform.

GAO-05-398R. Washington, D.C.: Apr. 21, 2005.

Human Capital: Key Principles for Effective Workforce Planning. 

GAO-04-39. Washington, D.C.: Dec.11, 2003.

Related GAO Products
Related GAO Products

Page 38 GAO-14-168 Human Capital

High-Risk Series: Strategic Human Capital Management. GAO-03-120. 

Washington, D.C.: January 2003.

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